To one who enters the Tagus in a fine season there is something
inexpressibly captivating wherever he turns his eyes.
The magnificent rock or mountain, forming a gigantic portal to the
mouth of the river, is remarkable for the richness and variety of
colour, the grandeur of its size, and the wildness and taste of its
form.
From this feature, towards Lisbon, towns, orange groves, forts, and
palaces make every yard a picture, and as he approaches Lisbon the size
and style of the buildings advance; the great convents, dazzling white,
the activity of the great road, the grinning batteries, the fury of
the bar, the whirling of the current, the antique richness and eminent
shape of the Tower of Belim, and then the splendid burst of the city,
with her thronged quays and mounting palaces, will long prevent the
visitor from perceiving that the southern bank of the river has nothing
but loftiness to recommend it.
A traveller who has seen Messina from the Straits immediately knows
what is wanting to Lisbon, viewed from the Tagus.
Messina presents to his view all that can be beautiful in a superb
city, embosomed in all that is luxuriant and romantic in Nature.
At the foot of her fair hills she occupies, with a splendid and uniform
length of architecture, the margin of the sea, and is even better seen
through the light fretwork of masts and rigging, upon which sailors
of all nations and in all costumes busily twine their pliant forms,
adding to her inanimate beauties an interesting display of wealth and
commerce. The city is backed by hills, clothed with the most various
and luxuriant vegetation; some are crowned by forts and covered with
the brightest verdure, which Flora has enamelled with a lavish hand;
others hang umbrageous woods or many-coloured thickets over their wild
precipices. Upon the slopes of these hills, rising above each other in
theatric pride and architectural magnificence, grand slashes of palace,
convent, and church are nested in this beautiful bed of vegetable
profusion.
On the other hand, the Italian mountains, which may be called the
other bank of this azure river, display every imaginable charm to
snatch his eyes from a successful rival. “Beautiful! thrice beautiful!
incomparable Messina!” he exclaims. “Never did mine eyes behold, nor
my imagination form, a scene whose laughing charms surpassed, or even
equalled, thine.”
After this he looks upon Lisbon, towering upon her hills, a vast mass
of splendid structures. All is building; a house-seller’s shop, a
proud and pompous city stretching her sceptre over the red waves of
the hasty Tagus.
“Queen of the river with the golden waves,” says the courteous
traveller, “thy magnificent appearance excites my admiration. Permit me
to tread upon thy spacious marts, to enter thy palaces, to contemplate
and wonder at thy riches.”
He pushes for the shore, where disappointment awaits him, conducts
him over all parts of the city, serves him at dinner and prepares his
bed, reconducts him to his ship, and with him ascends the side, from
whence he will no longer delight in those beauties which he knows to be
deceptive.
The streets of Lisbon are generally good, and many of them fine; there
are no mean houses, and the greater part are handsome and uniform
in height and size. There are but few squares, and those are not
remarkable.
The quays are very fine, and some noble streets give upon them through
magnificent gates, particularly the Rua Aurta, or Street of the
Jewellers and Gold-workers. This street, quite straight, broad, and
handsomely built, begins at the principal square and issues through a
superb gate upon the quay, where a colossal equestrian statue gives it
an imposing termination.
But the shops of this street, though abounding in precious stones and
precious metal, are extremely mean and exactly alike, each containing
a little working equipage for the jeweller (at which he sits), and
the window displays a few clumsy glazed boxes, in which his precious
commodities are stored.
But as these shops, though mean, are the best, the buyer, being
pressed for the want of a commodity, is obliged to hunt for it. The
art of alluring money from the pocket of the passenger by a rich and
astonishing display of merchandise which he does not want, carried to
its height in London, seems in Lisbon to be totally unknown.
The private houses are, some of them, superbly built and richly
furnished, but scarcely any of them are commodious, and there is
nothing that can be called the environs of a capital.
A public garden, which, though sheltered and well kept, is small,
formal, and uninteresting; and one theatre, which, though formerly
supplied with the first Italian performers, would not be admired
at a provincial town in England. The equipages, although of course
diminished in number, absolutely surprise by their barbarity; a clumsy
little body, seated upon two huge leathern straps, enormous wheels,
and two noble mules, is the only thing to be seen in the shape of a
carriage; and from the melancholy relics of the Court, which I had
an opportunity of observing, I should doubt if it ever exhibited any
elegance or splendour.
The streets are not only (even in this burning weather) covered with
dry filth and squalid rags, but are lined with naked beggars and
disgusting cripples, who bare and often augment their deformities and
afflictions to arouse the dormant compassion of the rich.
But however laughable, it is really dreadful to walk in these streets
by night, for your foot slides about in soft things, and the whizzing
over head and the splash! splash! splash! that assails your ears make
you expect to be covered with refuse every moment, for the city is
not lighted at all--a circumstance which must have been formerly as
favourable to assassination as it is now to these nightly discharges.
If in the night it is to the last degree shocking to walk the streets
of Lisbon, it is not very agreeable during the day. The inequality of
the ground fatigues, the importunity of the beggars plagues, and the
filth of the streets offends you, while nothing remarkable to the right
or left diverts the peevishness of disgust or rewards the diligence of
curiosity. There are no hotels, nor inns, at least that can serve a
decent man.
I cannot leave Lisbon without noticing the Aqueduct, which is one of
the most stupendous and striking structures I ever beheld. It stretches
right across a deep valley, and without attempting to recollect its
dimensions or to speak accurately on the subject, the impression it has
left with me is that a First-rate, with royals and studding-sails set,
could pass through the principal arch without touching in any part. To
stand under this arch is almost stupefying, and the gigantic size of
the whole is well illustrated by some houses close to it.